Animal Liberation Front

By Penny Roberts, Tribune Staff Writer. Tribune reporters John O'Brien and William Recktenwald contributed to this article | December 1, 1993

Law-enforcement agencies continued their investigation Tuesday into the Animal Liberation Front's possible involvement in the planting of incendiary devices in four downtown Chicago department stores. Meanwhile, a mainstream environmental group criticized the militant faction for using violent methods to gain attention. At an afternoon news conference, Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez said authorities were trying to confirm the authenticity of a statement from the Animal Liberation...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Los Angeles-area activists accused of sabotaging an Illinois mink farm and freeing 2,000 of the weasel-like animals from captivity there have been indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and interstate travel to interfere with an animal enterprise. The two-count indictment returned earlier this week by a federal grand jury in Chicago was unsealed on Thursday after one of the defendants, Tyler Lang, 25, was arrested in El Segundo, California,...

Weekend raids on three Wisconsin farms, during which thousands of mink were released, may be linked to an animal rights group that has claimed credit for mink-farm raids across the country, officials said Tuesday. Federal agents have joined the search because the raids may be part of a nationwide campaign targeting fur ranchers, Taylor County Sheriff Bill Breneman said. "We look at this as an act of domestic terrorism," he said. During the weekend, three mink farms were hit in...

A federal grand jury in Eugene, Ore., has indicted 11 people on charges that they committed acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of two environmental groups, the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Federal officials said Friday the defendants were responsible for 17 incidents in five Western states from 1996 to late 2001. The indictment, returned on Thursday and unsealed Friday, listed 65 charges, including arson, sabotage and conspiracy in attacks on government facilities,...

He has killed 20 of them with a shotgun. Still, flesh-eating fugitives are skulking around Jeffrey Weaver's place in the deep green foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The escapers stink to high heaven, but that is the least of Weaver's complaints. They have slaughtered dozens of his ducks and chickens, feasted on fingerling salmon in his creek and had the temerity to bite his dog in the throat. One of them leaped out of the shadows and scratched his arm. "For the size of the...

By Kirsten Scharnberg and Tim Jones, Tribune national correspondents. Kirsten Scharnberg reported from Iowa City and Tim Jones from Madison, Wis | June 9, 2005

The shaky, amateurish video shows everything in graphic detail: Four masked people break into darkened university labs, pour toxic chemicals onto computers and stacks of files, and release hundreds of research rats and mice. They spray-paint walls with slogans such as "Science not Sadism" and "Free the Animals." The November break-in at the University of Iowa's Spence Laboratories--an act for which there have been no arrests but for which the group Animal Liberation Front, or ALF,...

Chicago police are investigating whether a radical animal-rights organization planted fire-starting devices in four of the city's largest department stores over the weekend. The Animal Liberation Front is claiming responsibility for leaving the devices, which started small fires in Saks Fifth Avenue, Marshall Field's and Carson Pirie Scott, and forced the evacuation of the top floor of Neiman Marcus. In a news release dated Sunday that was faxed to the Washington,...

In 1997, two figures clad in black slipped through the northern Wisconsin pines and let hundreds of minks out of their cages. Nearly eight years later, a man identified by authorities as one of those figures, Peter Daniel Young, is about to be brought to Wisconsin for trial on federal charges in a case that could open a window on the radical animal-rights movement. While his alleged accomplice was captured six years ago, Young was on the run for more than seven...

The question of whether animals have special rights, or to what degree, is an endlessly debatable one. There is no debate, however, about the tactics some extremists use on behalf of animals. They are vicious and repugnant. In recent years, rabid animal activists have stooped to a variety of terrorist acts to advance their cause, among them death threats and firebombings that have caused major damage and destroyed years of research. The targets have ranged from institutions that use...

An unlicensed taxidermist was sentenced Friday to 4 years and 3 months in prison, the maximum possible, for slaughtering and skinning 20 endangered tigers and leopards. William Kapp, 37, of Tinley Park was among 15 defendants convicted as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigation of a Midwestern exotic animal ring. Kapp and others shot some of the cats at close range while the animals were confined in trailers or cages. They sold the meat to a Lockport butcher shop for $3...

In 1997, two figures clad in black slipped through the northern Wisconsin pines and let hundreds of minks out of their cages. Nearly eight years later, a man identified by authorities as one of those figures, Peter Daniel Young, is about to be brought to Wisconsin for trial on federal charges in a case that could open a window on the radical animal-rights movement. While his alleged accomplice was captured six years ago, Young was on the run for more than seven...

He has killed 20 of them with a shotgun. Still, flesh-eating fugitives are skulking around Jeffrey Weaver's place in the deep green foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The escapers stink to high heaven, but that is the least of Weaver's complaints. They have slaughtered dozens of his ducks and chickens, feasted on fingerling salmon in his creek and had the temerity to bite his dog in the throat. One of them leaped out of the shadows and scratched his arm. "For the size of the...

Authorities have what may be a significant piece of evidence they hope will help them discover who released thousands of minks from a Crystal Lake farm early this month--a letter claiming responsibility for the action. The letter, which authorities said was probably written by a participant in the action, apparently originated as an untraceable electronic mail message that circulated Monday to animal rights activists. It says the raid was done by an organization calling itself the...

Weekend raids on three Wisconsin farms, during which thousands of mink were released, may be linked to an animal rights group that has claimed credit for mink-farm raids across the country, officials said Tuesday. Federal agents have joined the search because the raids may be part of a nationwide campaign targeting fur ranchers, Taylor County Sheriff Bill Breneman said. "We look at this as an act of domestic terrorism," he said. During the weekend, three mink farms were hit in...

In 1987, the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of California at Davis was burned to the ground in a fire that caused about $3.5 million damage. In a two-month period that same year, someone set fire to a veal company warehouse and a grain and hay barn in San Jose, Calif. In 1992, a fire was set in a lab at Michigan State University, causing $125,000 in damage and destroying 32 years of research using minks. Each fire was later revealed to be the work of animals rights...

Authorities have what may be a significant piece of evidence they hope will help them discover who released thousands of minks from a Crystal Lake farm early this month--a letter claiming responsibility for the action. The letter, which authorities said was probably written by a participant in the action, apparently originated as an untraceable electronic mail message that circulated Monday to animal rights activists. It says the raid was done by an organization calling itself the...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two Los Angeles-area activists accused of sabotaging an Illinois mink farm and freeing 2,000 of the weasel-like animals from captivity there have been indicted on federal charges of conspiracy and interstate travel to interfere with an animal enterprise. The two-count indictment returned earlier this week by a federal grand jury in Chicago was unsealed on Thursday after one of the defendants, Tyler Lang, 25, was arrested in El Segundo, California,...

The question of whether animals have special rights, or to what degree, is an endlessly debatable one. There is no debate, however, about the tactics some extremists use on behalf of animals. They are vicious and repugnant. In recent years, rabid animal activists have stooped to a variety of terrorist acts to advance their cause, among them death threats and firebombings that have caused major damage and destroyed years of research. The targets have ranged from institutions that use...

An unlicensed taxidermist was sentenced Friday to 4 years and 3 months in prison, the maximum possible, for slaughtering and skinning 20 endangered tigers and leopards. William Kapp, 37, of Tinley Park was among 15 defendants convicted as part of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigation of a Midwestern exotic animal ring. Kapp and others shot some of the cats at close range while the animals were confined in trailers or cages. They sold the meat to a Lockport butcher shop for $3...

In 1987, the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of California at Davis was burned to the ground in a fire that caused about $3.5 million damage. In a two-month period that same year, someone set fire to a veal company warehouse and a grain and hay barn in San Jose, Calif. In 1992, a fire was set in a lab at Michigan State University, causing $125,000 in damage and destroying 32 years of research using minks. Each fire was later revealed to be the work of animals rights...